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Beaker

Monday’s trip to Nisqually was anything but spectacular, though it had its moments. One of those moments came just as I was returning to the visitor’s center.

I came around a corner and there was an American Bittern staring me right in the camera:

I think I was even more startled than it was, but that’s hard to judge, especially considering that look on it’s eyes.

I do know that he froze in one spot, and I had a hard time getting far enough away from him on the narrow walkway to get a full-frame shot:

It ducked into a clump of bushes, and I couldn’t see it at all, though it was clear it was still there. I had to move around the corner and come back to get this shot,

actually the next ten shots, because they were all variations on this pose as he held it for at least ten minutes, time enough for me to point it out to another visitor to the refuge, one who had no idea what kind of bird it was.

Wow! It’s astonishing and somehow life-affirming to see such a close-up of an American Bittern. I’ve only seen them a few times from a great distance. I’m beginning to feel that walking outside in a natural setting is the best meditation of all. That’s where I’m going now. There’s some fog this morning, but it looks as if it will clear.

I guess I’ve always considered my walks in “the woods” as forms of meditation, though the daily walks with the dog sometimes just seem like exercise, especially when we meet another dog nose-to-nose and it becomes an exercise in letting go of my annoyance.